充满细节的总统回忆录（四）

There was a final reason I wanted Gates on my team, and that was to push against my own biases. The image of me that had emerged from the campaign—the starry-eyed idealist who instinctively opposed military action and believed that every problem on the international stage could be solved through high-minded dialogue—had never been entirely accurate. Yes, I believed in diplomacy and thought war should be a last resort. I believed in multilateral cooperation to address problems like climate change, and I believed that the steady promotion of democracy, economic development, and human rights around the world served our long-term national security interests. Those who voted for me or had worked on my campaign tended to share those beliefs, and they were most likely to populate my administration.

But my foreign policy views—and, indeed, my early opposition to the invasion of Iraq—owed at least as much to the “realist” school, an approach that valued restraint, assumed imperfect information and unintended consequences, and temppered a belief in American exceptionalism with a humility about our ability to remake the world in our image. I would often surprise people by citing George H. W. Bush as a recent president whose foreign policy I admired. Bush, along with James Baker, Colin Powell, and Brent Scowcroft, had deftly managed the end of the Cold War and the successful prosecution of the Gulf War.

（我之所以打算让盖兹加入我的团队，最后一点在于要纠正外界对我的偏见。我在选战中给人的印象是一个不务实的理想主义者，偏执地反对任何军事 行动，坚信能以高屋建瓴地对话就解决掉全部的国际纷争。然而，外界对我的这种印象绝非全然可靠。不错，我固然相信外交，视战争为最终手段。我也相信气候变化等问题需要依赖多边合作而解决，也相信美国长期的国安利益依赖于稳步推动全球民主化、经 济发展和人权保障。那些投票支持我的人或是帮我竞选的工作人员，大多和我想法相同，因而他们最可能是新政府聘任的人。然而我的外交策略（尽管我一开始确曾反对入侵伊拉克）至少另有相当多一部分出自“现实主义”学派，该学派重视力量的克制，以信息的不完备和后果的不可预计为假设，要求谦卑姿态，而非高扬美国例外的旗帜，动辄就以为能依我们的想法改造这个世界。我曾说最近的几位总统中，我钦佩老布什总统的外交策略，这出乎很多人预料。另外，詹姆斯·贝 克（James Baker）、柯林·鲍威尔（Colin Powell）、布伦特·斯考克罗夫特（Brent Scowcroft）等人，同样是国防外交领域中令我敬仰的前辈，他们运用灵活策略赢得了冷战，也成功地将波斯湾战争的罪魁祸首捕入法网。 )

通观全书，你会发现，虽然奥巴马把小布什离任时的美国经济状况说得一团糟，但是对于小布什个人基本上还是持一种友好的姿态，而对于老布什的施政则更是正面评价不止一处。

最后仍然是照片摘选:

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​这个把手伸向奥巴马的老头是美国黑人民权运动领袖约翰·刘易斯，已于去年去世

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